Electoral map of the 1860 presidential election, showing the fractured four-way contest: Republican Abraham Lincoln (red), Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge (green), Constitutional Union candidate John Bell (orange), and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas (blue).(Pubilc Domain/via Wikimedia)
I was running some numbers while working on my book, and while the history is a staple of the best commentary on the period, putting it in graphical form really jumped out at me. The popular vote era (i.e., when most states began selecting their electors by a popular vote that was tabulated and published) began in 1828, when all but two states (South Carolina and Delaware) held a popular vote for president. From 1832-60, only South Carolina continued the old method of the legislature selecting electors. For most of this period, the country was evenly divided between slave states ...
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